Investigating the gaze-driven reversed congruency effect in the spatial Stroop task: A distributional approach

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Social Cognition

Background:

• Attentional orienting is crucial for processing environmental information.
• Social stimuli (faces, eyes) may elicit unique attentional responses compared to non-social stimuli (arrows).
• The spatial Stroop task is a common paradigm to study attentional conflict.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how social versus non-social stimuli influence attentional orienting.
• To compare the effects of faces, eyes, and arrows in a spatial Stroop task.
• To analyze attentional conflict across the entire distribution of response times.

Main Methods:

• Meta-analysis of 11 studies (N=705) using a distributional approach.
• Analysis via cumulative distribution functions (CDF), delta functions, and polynomial trend analyses.
• Application of reaction time (RT), delta, and trend models to compare stimulus types and conditions.

Main Results:

• Non-social stimuli showed a standard congruency effect (SCE) with faster responses in congruent trials.
• Social stimuli exhibited a reversed congruency effect (RCE) with faster responses in incongruent trials, particularly from the second quantile onwards.
• Faces induced a larger RCE than eyes, potentially due to configural complexity.

Conclusions:

• Social and non-social stimuli modulate attentional orienting differently in the spatial Stroop task.
• Shared early perceptual and attentional mechanisms exist for faces and eyes.
• Distinct processing patterns emerge for social stimuli, especially faces, influencing attentional conflict.